Tanya Fox, editor, and Brooke Smith, managing editor, are the editorial team behind CardMaker magazine. When not reviewing design submissions and planning future issues of the magazine and pattern books, they can often be found exploring websites for inspiration and visiting their favorite local coffee shop.

They hope you’ll visit the blog often as they share card-making tips, designer features, paper-crafting techniques, project inspiration and a peek at life inside the CardMaker office.

Hi! It’s Piali here—today I’m going to share one of my favorite techniques to do with stencils.

Stencils are very trendy nowadays; generally they are used with inks, embossing pastes and paints. I like to doodle over my stenciled backgrounds for a cool Zentangle-ish look. I always admire how intricate and beautiful zentangle designs are!

For this technique, you’ll need the following:

Stencils

Paper

Fine-tip pen

Inks

Sponge/daubers

Tape

Let me show you how I do it. First is the basic stenciling. I sponged distress ink over the stencil to create a colorful background. Tip: I use a sponge dauber for detailed stencils.

For this project, I chose a rainbow-color scheme. The photo above shows what the background looked like once I finished applying the inks.

I then moved onto the fun doodling part. I just did random designs, nothing fancy or perfect. If you want some great design ideas, take a look at Pinterest and search for zentangle.

Here’s the background once the stencil is removed. Sometimes I add a little bit of white gel pen doodling for extra fun!

I finished the card by adding a die-cut sentiment. Since the background is so colorful, I tried to keep the embellishments to a minimum. Here is my finished card with a stenciled and faux zentangled look.

Hope you like it!

Shown above is another card with the same technique. It’s a fun technique. I hope you give it a try. Don’t forget to share your creations at the CardMaker Facebook page; I would love to see them.